A laugh slipped out of her before she could stop it. It sounded thin and foolish. “No, I don’t.”
The scarred man reached into his jacket.
Half the diner froze.
But he only pulled out an envelope.
He placed it on the nearest table and slid it toward her with two fingers.
“No one is going to hurt you,” he said. “Mr. Salvatore requests your presence.”
Clara heard the name move through the diner like a draft.
Salvatore.
A fork slipped from someone’s hand and rang against a plate.
Marla’s face drained of color.
Clara knew the name in the way everyone in the city knew it. Not from newspapers. The newspapers wrote careful things about “business interests” and “alleged associations.” People knew the truth from whispers, from shuttered stores, from police cars arriving too late, from men who lowered their voices when black sedans passed.
The Salvatores owned the city’s fear.
And now they were asking for her.
“No,” Clara said.
The scarred man studied her as if she had done something interesting. “No?”
“I don’t know Mr. Salvatore.”
“He knows you.”
“That’s his problem.”
The younger man’s jaw tightened.
The scarred man lifted one hand slightly, and the younger man went still.
Inside the envelope was a single sheet of thick cream paper.
Clara did not touch it.
“Read it,” the scarred man said.
She hated that she obeyed.
The handwriting was black and elegant.
Miss Hayes,
You saved my life. I would like to thank you properly.
Leo Salvatore.
Below the signature was an address in Raven Hill, the old-money district Clara had only seen from bus windows.
She looked back at the men.
“I donated blood at a hospital,” she said. “That’s all.”
“To him,” the younger man replied.
Clara’s mouth went dry.
The man on the gurney. The white shirt soaked red. The limp hand. The doctors shouting for blood.
